How to use abbrev for words with dollar-sign ($) as prefix?

Question

My setup

GNU Emacs GUI (version 24.4.51.1 (x86_64-w64-mingw32) compiled from Harroogan Emacs.)

Situation

I would like to type a word in PHP-mode, and it will automatically expand to a proper word.

For example, I would like to type $session and he will expand it to $_SESSION.

When reading the manual about Abbrev mode

Type the word you want to use as expansion, and then type ‘C-x a g’ and the abbreviation for it. Example:

    t h e C-x a g t e h RET

Unfortunately, if you wanted to abbreviate Read The Fine Manual with RTFM, you couldn’t just type C-x a g after “Read the Fine Manual

So I put the cursor behind the word $_SESSION, then C-x a g and type $session. But I notice it will only expand session to SESSION without the underhyphen or the dollar variable.

When I'm looking in the .abbrev_defs with M-x edit-abbrevs, then the following is mentioned:

(global-abbrev-table)

"session"    0    "SESSION"

Then I try to change it to

"session"      2    "$_SESSION"

And save it with M-x write-abbrev-file, it didn't help. Maybe the abbrev uses regexp (?), thuis excluding the dollar sign. Any another suggestion?

Answer 1

when you define a abbrev table, you can add a property to specify regex on what chars to look for.

Example:

(define-abbrev-table 'xah-elisp-abbrev-table
  '(
    ("d" "(defun f▮ ()\n  \"DOCSTRING\"\n  (interactive)\n  (let (VAR)\n\n  ))" nil :system t)
    ("i" "(insert ▮)" nil :system t)
    ("l" "(let (x▮)\n x\n)" nil :system t)
    ("m" "(message \"%s▮\" ARGS)" nil :system t)
    ("p" "(point)" nil :system t)
    ("s" "(setq ▮ VAL)" nil :system t)
    ("w" "(when ▮)" nil :system t)
    )

  "abbrev table for `xah-elisp-mode'"
  :regexp "\\([_-0-9A-Za-z]+\\)"
  :case-fixed t
  :enable-function 'xah-elisp-abbrev-enable-function
  )

The above is taken from a mode. I haven't tried this with normal abbrev, but am pretty sure you can do so. See a example here: http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_abbrev_mode.html

Answer 2

Get the following entry in abbrev-file:

("ds" "$_session" nil 1)

Expands as expected.

Unfortunatly this only works with my tweaked abbrev add facility.

See ar-abbrev-extensions.el at

https://github.com/andreas-roehler/werkstatt